What if we are the stranger… (reflection based on Luke 10:1-11)

So much of the imagery of an inclusive community is about showing hospitality to others, welcoming others, being open and expansive in our welcome – whether it is welcoming a new one into our family, or a refugee or asylum seeker. Here at Sophia’s Spring we aspire to being welcoming, hospitable and generous.

Today’s readings offer us a different perspective on how you and I might participate in creating a better world.

First is to declare the assumption I am making about us gathered here – that is, we wish to participate and be partners in creating a more just, more compassionate world, wherever we exercise influence – in our family, in our neighbourhood, in our workplace, in our friendships, our community, our nation and so on.

The provocative thought and invitation from today is that not only might we achieve that by being welcoming and hospitable in our own spaces and community – welcoming the stranger, the refugee, the outsider, the marginalised – but this morning we are offered another way to bring peace and justice: and it is this, that we become the stranger, the outsider, the guest in someone else’s community.

We are the ones who are to travel to other places, to other communities and other spaces, conceptually, physically, emotionally. Places where we are not the ones in control, or the ones who have the power to set the agenda, where we are guest or stranger.

In your mind’s eye perhaps you can identify some of those spaces in your everyday week.  For when we think about it we are often in places where we are the stranger – out of our comfort zone.

We are invited, encouraged to leave the comfort zone of our own familiar surroundings, our physical or safe emotional spaces and step into someone else’s space and spend time in that space as guest or stranger.

It is in these places that we need to learn the behaviour of being guest rather than host.

full text of Jenny’s reflection here: